Challenging the stifling filibuster rule
Let’s be clear: The filibuster does not protect debate. Instead, the rule transfers power from the majority to the minority, letting 41 out of 100 senators block even the start of debate on bills and nominees. Put another way, the 60-vote supermajority rule has become the de facto threshold over all Senate business, allowing the minority to wield a veto over the majority’s right to pass laws — something the framers contemplated but expressly rejected. The current rule does not even require senators to be present and speaking on the floor; a simple note to the leadership stating a senator’s intent to block a bill or nominee halts action or forces a cloture vote, with 60 votes required to move forward. The rule even denies Vice President Joe Biden — as president of the Senate — one of his sole powers: breaking a tie.
The filibuster has been used by Republicans to make the 112th Congress the least productive since 1947’s infamous “Do Nothing Congress.” Since 2006, the number of filibusters has more than doubled; it hit 139 in the 110th Congress (2007-08), 137 in the 111th Congress (2009-10) and is on track to reach similar heights before the current, 112th Congress, adjourns. In 2009 alone, there was double the number of filibusters that occurred in the entire 20-year period from 1950-1969, when they were used repeatedly to block civil rights legislation and the equality of all citizens under the law.Continue Reading
Surely, this is not how the framers intended our government to function. If 60 votes were required to pass bills or vote on nominees — or 67 votes to reform the rules at the start of a new Congress — the Constitution would say so, just as it sets out supermajority requirements for overriding a veto or impeaching a president.
Common Cause will continue to make its case in court that the principle of majority rule applies except in those few instances that the Constitution requires a supermajority vote. The Senate’s rules can no longer be permitted to provide cover to a strategy of unprecedented obstruction and abuses of power.
Bob Edgar is president and CEO of Common Cause.